Some of the leading lights from the world of Virtual Reality gathered in Gateshead yesterday for an event aimed at showing off its possibilities to the North East.

Around 100 people turned out for the event at the Northern Design Centre, which included talks from Patrick Connor, principal engineer at Playstation VR, who focused on graphics, and Oliver Kibblewhite, head of special project at Rewind Studios, who offered insights on taking the real world into the virtual world.

North East companies represented included Coatsink, Chronicles VR and Atomhawk.

The Virtual Realtiy sector is growing at a rapid rate, with businesses of all kinds embracing the potential of fully immersive digital experiences.

The North East is developing a growing reputation in the field, aided by VR hub VRTGO Labs in Gateshead, the first VR centre of excellence outside the academic world. An annual VRTGO conference and expo is also held, helping raise the profile of the region in the field.

Carri Cunliffe, of events company Secret Sauce, said this had been a success but serious developers had pointed out that they would also benefit from a more technically-focused event.

Watch the virtual reality event here

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

“This seems to be the only developer day of its kind in Europe,” Ms Cunliffe said.

“We wanted it to be a chance for North East developers to hear about the best tools and best tricks for developing within Virtual Reality.

“We wanted to provide an opportunity for them to gain lots of knowledge from those who are actually developing the hardware and the technology.”

Among those to speak at the event was Dan Gilmore of the Gateshead-based Atomhawk, who discussed user interface designs within VR.

“Atomhwawk is a digital art and design agency providing concept art, marketing art and user interface design mainly for the games industry, but also for film and TV and purposes outside the entertainment space,” he told The Journal.

“Some of our games clients have been moving into VR and we have been fortunate to become involved in that quite early on. We worked on the UI design for the launch titles for the Oculus Rift, for example.

“VR is in some ways a very different medium and with that comes different demands in terms of UI (user interface).

“There are questions about how to get the best out of it, but hopefully our early exposure will put us in a good position going forward.”

Among the best-known titles Atomhawk has worked on is EVE: Valkyrie, with games firm CCP consulting with the business over the UI design elements.

In this instance, crucial information for the player was built into the cockpit of a spaceship in which the central character is situated.

In other games, finding a space to place these details within the virtual world can be more problematic.

“One of the main differences with VR is that you are able to look all around you,” Mr Gilmore said. “You would think that makes it much better, because there are more places in which to put the UI elements.

“But its actually quite unsettling for people - so you need to figure out where the UI elements should live.

“What is key is that the player has defined places to go to for the information they need. Making sure people know where those are is important.”

Mr Gilmore added that Atomhawk was seeing a growing demand for its services within the VR space.

“There are lot of North East doing interesting things in this space, but we are working with businesses from all over the world,” he said.